Tale Of Girls' Deaths Teaches Brutal Lesson

Film About Hate Killings Is A Reminder Of The Pain Endured In The Struggle For Racial Equality

February 23, 1998|By TOM JICHA TV/Radio Writer

Spike Lee's 4 Little Girls is not easy to watch. There is no entertainment value in a nonfiction account of the hate murders of innocent children while they were worshipping God. The Oscar-nominated HBO documentary about the racially motivated bombing of a black church in Birmingham, Ala., also suffers from being dominated by a procession of talking heads. Archival footage is interspersed, but the majority of the piece consists of low-key recollections and opinions. Paradoxically, while these reflections compromise 4 Little Girls visually, they also are the strength of the production.

No matter how difficult it might be to stay with 4 Little Girls for 100 minutes, it is well worth the effort. Ideally, families should strive to watch it together. For African-Americans, it is a reminder of the pain that has been endured in the struggle for racial equality. For non-blacks, especially young people whose social consciences are still being molded, 4 Little Girls eloquently demonstrates where senseless bigotry and hatred can lead. Shots of four children on a slab in a morgue are powerful imagery.

Lee does an excellent job of setting the mood of time and place. Birmingham in the '60s was one of the most racially divided cities in the United States. It was also one of the most violent, an industrial steel-mill town where union-management disputes routinely turned ugly.

This was in addition to the commonplace racial lynchings; sickeningly graphic photographic evidence is provided. A former garbage dump, which African-Americans had renewed into a thriving upper middle class community, became known as Dynamite Hill because of frequent bombings by resentful whites.

From this milieu, Birmingham became a center for the non-violent civil rights movement, an effort that indirectly led to the attack on the 16th Street Baptist Church on Sept. 15, 1963. White racists hoped the bombing would discourage further attempts at integration. Instead it steeled the will of activists and put the inequities under a global spotlight.

Numerous prominent figures contribute to 4 Little Girls _ Jesse Jackson, Walter Cronkite, Andrew Young, Bill Cosby (identified as ``educator''), Nicholas Katzenbach, the attorney general during the Kennedy administration. Others, including Martin Luther King and the contemptible Bull Connor, who ordered that ferocious dogs and powerful fire hoses be used against demonstrators, are seen on film and tape. Former Alabama Gov. George Wallace is seen then and now. In the '60s, he can be seen standing in the doorway of a school to block its integration and issuing his infamous ``segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever'' declaration. Almost 40 years later, he pathetically attempts to revise history. The wheelchair-bound, barely audible politician argues that he can't be a racist because some of his best friends are black. He compounds the gaffe by dragging a clearly embarrassed African-American aide into the picture to bolster his contention.

Katzenbach reveals, with some glee, how he was told by Bobby Kennedy that JFK wanted him to make Wallace look silly. It was one of the easier assignments he ever had as attorney general.

The most poignant scenes of 4 Little Girls are the reminiscences of the victims' survivors. The family of Denise McNair, who was only 11 when her life was horrifically ended, explains how they kept the piece of concrete that was found embedded in her skull. Her father, J. Christopher McNair, relates that as agonizing as it was to claim the body of his little girl, it was no worse than the time he had to explain to her why she couldn't satisfy her hunger with a hamburger at a ``whites only'' lunch counter.

The mother of Cynthia Wesley recalls the irony of her last words to her martyred daughter, that Cynthia tidy up her appearance going to church because, ``you never know how you're coming back.''

In spite of the worldwide outrage triggered by the attack, it was 14 years before a social misfit segregationist, ``Dynamite Bob'' Chambliss, was arrested and convicted for the crime. He was believed to have had at least three accomplices, but there have been no additional arrests. The possibility that 4 Little Girls could serve as a surrogate America's Most Wanted is just one more reason to make it appointment viewing.